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The uncontrolled reality of on line shopping is there for all to see. It is time that on line only retail contributes to the ever increasing property rates that so called bricks and mortar retailers have to pay as without those retailers on line would not be enjoying growing sales.

Even though footfall is declining year on year in the vast majority of shopping centres none of them will reflect this in the level of rental and service charges they make and property rates continue to increase to unsustainable levels.

This country has more retail space per capita than any other comparable country in the world, it is perhaps then one of the reasons that we are called a nation of shopkeepers where we invented organised multiple retailing hundreds of years ago why is it then that as an industry we continue to have little to no power to make the government make sensible fair changes to our industry.

If retail was considered in the same terms as industry it would be a fairer marketplace.